785492 - Web apps do not show an indication of loading pages

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 772680

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Web Apps (PWAs), defect)

Description

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

Web apps are pulling resources from the web and there is always the possibility of a poor connection. This leads to temporarily blank pages with no content and no readily apparent reason for the user. I find this a frustrating user experience.

I think there should be an overlay that comes down to show page loading. This can be similar to the blue spinner that appears in the top left of the awesomebar to show page loads. Alternatively, the "loading" dropdown on the Marketplace website is equally useful.

Comment 1

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

This was ruled a wont-fix in bug 772680.

Comment 2

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

(In reply to Aaron Train [:aaronmt] from comment #1)
> This was ruled a wont-fix in bug 772680.

I suppose it's fair to say that the developers should implement the functionality. I am still concerned, however, since I feel that users can have an inexplicably poor experience with webs apps because of the connection requirement. This is made worse as these apps may appear native to the average user.

(Also, there didn't seem to be much discussion there... I assume the discussion occurred elsewhere? Is there any reasoning for the decision?)

Comment 3

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

(In reply to Michael Comella (:mcomella) from comment #2)
> I suppose it's fair to say that the developers should implement the
> functionality. I am still concerned, however, since I feel that users can
> have an inexplicably poor experience with webs apps because of the
> connection requirement. This is made worse as these apps may appear native
> to the average user.

There is no connection requirement.  Packaged apps by their nature store necessary resources locally; and hosted apps should use an appcache manifest to specify all necessary resources, which the runtime will then download and pre-cache on install (modulo any remaining bugs on that functionality).


> (Also, there didn't seem to be much discussion there... I assume the
> discussion occurred elsewhere? Is there any reasoning for the decision?)

Ragavan and I discussed the issue at length and agreed that the runtime should generally be invisible to the user, whose goal is to use the app, not the runtime, and for whom interaction with the runtime runs the risk of confusing the user, especially since native apps do not expose their runtime.

There are exceptions to that principle, f.e. security prompts, but they are limited.  And runtime invisibility is conventional for similar application runtimes (cf. Java, Silverlight, and Air).

Note also that "page load" is a particularly poor indicator of status in the world of modern web development, in which most resource retrieval takes place after page load.  Overall "network activity" would be more informative, but it is already indicated by the operating environment (via the network activity indicator on the Android status bar).